


Beach Song

by TheSubtextMachine



Category: Total Drama (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Gwen has a good time, LISTEN ive been thinking about this since spring break, My great summer fanfiction renaissance, innocent teen partying, mentions of lettuce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 08:52:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15139541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSubtextMachine/pseuds/TheSubtextMachine
Summary: Gwen goes to one of Geoff's parties after Total Drama Island ends.It doesn't suck.





	Beach Song

Gwen goes ts to Geoff’s party.

It doesn’t suck.

When she walks in, she has the Canadian Punk Gall to put her hair up in a fancy-ish updo with the help of dollar store barrettes and her older sister’s hairspray. It’s less goth than her usual look, but she bets money that she’ll still look like a freakshow standing next to Geoff’s bottle blonde friends.

Geoff’s house itself isn’t what she expected. It’s a lot less “Californian Luxury” than she expected, it’s just a normal house. She doesn’t see how a party could be as epic as Geoff describes his to be, considering that the main attraction is the horde of stoners around the microwave, making marshmallows explode. 

There’s a lot of strangers, and by some turn of luck, they aren’t all supermodels and beach babes. There are even some other goths, lounging out on his grandpa-style couches and sharing a gigantic bag of corn chips.

Geoff seems to notice her once he looks up from his flip phone, and the way that he drops everything to storm over and give her a hug makes Gwen feel the slightest warm feeling, like she’s loved or something.

“Gwen! G-Dawg! My Main G! How’re you?” Geoff says, wide smide on his face like it’s the most natural thing in the world, for both of them to be at a house party together.

“The usual. How about you, my fellow G-Dawg?” Gwen asks over a smile that feels almost unfamiliar to her face. Geoff practically chortles at the nickname coming out of Gwen, and it attracts the attention of someone who has a lampshade in his hand. None of the lamps in her immediate vicinity are missing a shade, so Gwen handles the possibility that the stranger walking over to them brought a lampshade from home for… some reason.

“Geoff! Who’s this?” the stranger asks, and he has the same laugh in his voice that Geoff has. The constant positivity keeps Gwen smiling.

“This is Gwen! We were on Total Drama together, and I thought that she totally needed to go to one of my parties. She’s super cool. Gwen, this is Nick. We have AP Bio together, he’s a cool guy.”

Nick shoves out his hand (the one not currently clutching the mystery lampshade, naturally), and they shake hands in a way that would be formal if it weren’t for the fact that someone was doing the Macarena a few meters away. 

“What’s the deal with the lampshade, if you don’t mind me asking?””

“It’s not a party without a guy with a lampshade on his head.”

“Really?” The logic wasn’t totally impossible, Gwen supposes, but it seemed off.

“No, it’s just a running joke. One time I put Jeff’s on my head, so he told me to bring my own, so I do that whenever he has a party. Most of the weird traditions at these parties come from jokes, if I’m being honest. Sucks that you missed the last Lettuce party, though. Those are fuckin’ blasts?”

“Lettuce party?”

“Yeah, we have a competition of who can finish eating a head of lettuce first,” says Geoff. He offers no further explanation for why they do it, so Gwen decides not to ask any more questions. Instead, she figures that she should get into the teen party experience as quickly as possible.

“So, since this is my first party since I was 10, what should I do first?” Gwen asks, and she puts her hands up in a gesture so awkward she gets the immediate urge to fold in on herself and never speak again. She would’ve done exactly this if she wasn’t interrupted by Nick.

“Since you were ten? Duuuuuude! That’s-”

“Don’t judge me. I know I’m lame, or whatever.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that we are going to make this the most rocking party for you! I hope you’re ready to get your life changed, Gwyneth!” Nick exclaims, waving his lampshade about with such enthusiasm that she hopes it doesn’t go flying right into the ceiling fan twirling right above them.

“It’s short for Gwendolyn, actually.”

“Nice! So, Geoff, how are we going to make this the best possible party for _Gwendolyn_?”

“Good question, good question…” Geoff says, and it would be ominous if he wasn’t so ridiculously nonthreatening, with his hat that didn’t fit and his boyish smile.

“I’m all ears,” says Gwen, keeping her voice calm and sardonic enough to mask the fact that she’s actually a bit anxious about this whole thing. Can the Queen of Darkness really participate in something normal? Could she fit in with Geoff and his motley crew of fun-lovers?

“First on the menu: Balls on the wall dance party,” Geoff says after faux-serious consideration, and with what seems like the snap of the fingers, Nick is jogging to the entertainment center, rifling through DVDs and CDs. He seems to find the perfect one, because he throws it into the disc player and music starts filling the room.

It’s an unfamiliar groove to Gwen, but it’s good for dancing. It’s not club music, not rap. It’s dad music, the kind of music that makes middle aged men bob their heads in their cars. Geoff is flailing about without abandon before they even get to what Gwen assumes is a rocking verse, and some of the other kids begin to flock close to him, shimmying their shoulders and spinning in lazy circles. Gwen starts to do some kind of preppy two-step, and follows it up with swaying arms that would look dorky if she wasn’t dancing next to Geoff, who was doing some kind of hybrid lawn mower/robot move, much to the appreciation of the crowd. Gwen even whoops along to the music, giggling in amusement in the way that Geoff finds joy in making people laugh. 

The next song fades in, and some stranger does a dramatic entrance, clearly exiting from Geoff’s room. He’s covered in costume pieces and jackets and shirts, and he begins to do a fake strip tease with them, pulling off his pirate hat in a mockery of eroticism. 

Everyone’s laughing and yelling “take it off!”, and Gwen finds herself smiling easily, something she never expected. The dad music floats through the room and she closes her eyes to sway to the waves of it as it passes over her head. She bumps shoulder with another goth girl, who gives her a hearty nod, mouthing “hi” with her white lipstick.

The stripping stranger tosses a cowboy hat into the audience, and the goth girl herself catches it, before turning back to Gwen and slipping it neatly on Gwen’s tangled hair. 

“What’s your name? Gwen half-yells over the music.

“Anna! I haven’t seen you at school!” Anna yells over the music, before spinning in time with the swell of a guitar.

“I go to a different school! I know Geoff from a, uh, camp I went to!” Gwen says, doing her own spin, and a vest is thrown over her head, distracting her for a second.

“That’s neat! What school do you actually go to, though?”

“Hermann High, the big HH.”

“Wait a minute, are we football rivals?” Anna asks, before shooting a look and a casual ‘whoop’ in the direction of the guy throwing a thin-plastic construction worker hat to Geoff.

“I think so. So, are we enemies now?”

“I sure hope not.”

Anna lets loose her smile, and the exchange makes Gwen laugh even more, and her head gets thrown back with the simple force of it, and the song comes to an end. Her laughter continues through the moment of silence between the two numbers, and by the end of the song after that, Geoff is chanting something that’s incomprehensible beneath the dinn. 

Soon, enough people quieted down for the chant of “Portrait time! Portrait time! Portrait time!”.

He herds them to sitting on the carpet of his living room, some people lounging across couches to see how much space they could take up. He and Nick take their standing places in front of the fireplace, holding a scarf, some pieces of printer paper, and Geoff’s little sister’s set of crayons. 

“Who’s ready to hear the rules?” Nick says, holding his paper in the air. 

“Not me!” yells someone on one of the couches, speaking around the stick of celery sticking out of her mouth.

“Isla, you can’t keep doing this,” says the boy next to her.

“Anyway, here’s what we are gonna do. I’m gonna blindfold the drawer while we choose the person being drawn, and then they will sit back to back. The drawer will try to do a portrait while the audience will try to describe the person being drawn. We’ll try to see how accurate the picture is,” Geoff explains, as Nick whips out a TV dinner tray to draw on.

The teens let out their usual noises of excitement, and some stranger’s hand shoots up.

“I can be the fist one drawing! Blindfold me up, Geoff!” she shouts, standing up and walking over. He follows the direction happily, and puts his finger to his lips to make sure that everyone is quiet. He takes that finger and points it to Gwen, and she tries to get up despite the people crowding her space. 

It takes a few awkward steps over people she’s never met, but soon she’s standing on the plush carpet of Geoff’s living room (of all people, of all places), as she feels the gaze of a hoard of kids bore into her soul.

“Okay, guys. Now… START!” Geoff practically yells, and the sheer wall of noise that attacks Gwen is astounding. 

Shouts of “she looks like she makes out in graveyards!” to “tall, thin, black hair!” to “cute as hell!” fade in and out, she’s only able to understand one at a time, and she bets that whoever is drawing her portrait is having a hell of a time. 

Eventually, after many laughable descriptions (“A socially acceptable vampire!” is Gwen’s personal favorite), the artist yells “Done!” over the noise of her audience, and she hands the paper to Geoff while turning to look back at Gwen. She’s visibly holding back a groan of dread when Geoff reveals her masterpiece.

It’s a big mess, with hastily drawn dark crayon colors. The Gwen in the picture has obnoxiously long black hair, and fangs. She’s also wearing a white t-shirt that just says “goth” on it, and that little detail practically makes Gwen double over laughing.

Despite the sun setting through the windows, the whole room feels recklessly sunny.

Someone shouts “Who’s next?”, and the game continues, but Gwen is still smiling. She sits on the floor and leans her forehead against the warm surface of Geoff’s shoulder, and the simple intimacy of the action eats her alive in the best way possible. 

Geoff himself looks down at her, and she moves away from his shoulder when his mouth opens, ready to ask some question.

“So, how’re you liking your first party?”

“It doesn’t suck,” she says, but her true feelings are revealed by the smile that just won’t go away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this! This has been in my drafts forever, tbh. Please comment, and/or check me out on tumblr @thesubtextmachine!


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